Farm Mental Health, Rural Policy, and the Cost of Urban Bias in Canada
Canada Post at a crossroads is illustrative of union negotiations and of Canadian culture and values, but emphatic in the evolving dispute is that it is not profitable.
The questions of whether it was ever meant to be, or whether profitability is the measure of the value of a social service, crumble in the hand of the economic engine.
The previous strike, during the holidays, was noticed most by rural populations when cards or gifts were lost or when getting your orders required spending the afternoon driving to town. Close a rural branch, as is now proposed; only rural people will notice, and what do they matter?
The reaction is closer to so what? than what else will we lose?
Growth in sectors that cluster in cities (service, tech, finance, education) gives urban areas more growth momentum, more power, and more funding. Meanwhile, agriculture, resources, and primary industries have been more volatile and have not provided steady growth or warranted attention in many rural areas.
The promise of a better life farming in the New World brought many of our ancestors here to try it out.
Motivated at least in part by the belief that a future in their home countries was unimaginable, the descendants of these courageous ones, if they happen to still share in the created way of life, could say with a bit of honest conviction: There’s no future here now either.
Farm Mental Health and Rural Policy
Farm mental health has entered politics. With the need established through a growing body of literature, services are improving their quality and broadening their scope.
An hour in town is three (or more) away from the farm. People in ag made the call: if you want to help farmers, we need greater accessibility and a better understanding of farm life, as it is not as it’s presented. Many listened.
And if you want to understand something, try to change it. Farming has always been political. Wars are still fought over arable land. Commodities are still food, and producing food is always meaningful and valuable.
“No farms, no food” is a strange catchphrase because it goes without saying. And yet, we’re so removed from the production of the things we eat daily, so removed that it’s news that food doesn’t come from the grocery store.
Considering that Canada is mostly a vast country with a few urban centres, Canadian public policy favours populations concentrated in cities.
The push is toward the urban. In 2016, offhand, former prime minister Jean Chrétien’s suggestion for the Attawapiskat crisis was that they move to cities. Life on the land is seen as nostalgic, not necessary.
If rural communities aren’t viable, they’re seen as dispensable.
Urban Bias in Rural Healthcare
Examples abound:
Alberta’s NDP responded to a farm accident by proposing farm labourers be subject to safety measures comparable to other industries and receive WCB. Urban assumptions (employer/employee distinctions, unionization, shift work) clashed with intergenerational, family-based agricultural work.
The centralization of Alberta Health Services (2008) led to closures or reductions of small-town hospitals, maternity wards, and emergency departments. This reflected urban assumptions about efficiency and specialization but often left rural communities travelling long distances for care.
Greyhound left Western Canada in 2018. Nothing has filled that gap; infrastructure priorities favour high-density commuter needs over inter-community connectivity, which isolates rural populations further.
Provincial mental health initiatives often fund urban clinics, hospitals, and community centers, while rural residents face long drives, waitlists, or lack of providers altogether. Telehealth initiatives help, but they assume reliable broadband access, which many rural areas lack.
These examples illustrate that when it comes to public health policy, the strategy is to make the rural urban.
Recovery Alberta and Farm Mental Health
Recovery Alberta, the UCP’s proposed strategy for delivering mental health, addictions, and substance use health services: make it involuntary, make it inpatient. $180 million for 150 beds in Calgary and Edmonton.
Meanwhile, rural residents are seeking out mental health support wherever they can, putting added strain on emergency rooms and FCSS, services neither designed for nor capable of handling farm-specific mental health needs.
Noble initiatives aimed at better supporting farm family mental health are now sending patients to city counselling centres. Why? To fill a need. $6.75 million to build supports available to rural areas. The message? Come to the city, call the city, and they’ll get you what you need.
Here’s the danger: when it is sought, when it is available, what will be delivered? Yes, suicide rates are higher among rural communities, and yes, particularly among men working in primary industries.
Yes, some suggest this also means lower resilience, illustrates a toxic stoicism, or reflects poor coping and an inability to seek help. But what if the help offered isn’t the help needed?
We learned to be self-reliant because we had to. The water needs to be fixed now, not when a journeyman plumber is available. We seek help but seek it where we know it is: within our communities, our families, and places of worship.
Farming is often celebrated as a way of life. It’s not an occupation; it’s a way of being in the world, one not without challenges, as working with nature will always be, but it’s one we know and love. As people, we have psychological needs, but if treating those needs translates to adopting urban values because they’re “better for you,” we’ll lose the farmer.
And with the farmer, what else will we lose?
FIELD NOTES FROM GREENFIELD COUNSELLING
This is where you’ll find reflections on the kinds of struggles that bring people to therapy — anxiety, burnout, grief, transitions, and the quiet disconnection that makes life feel less like your own.